Taking your health for granted is easy to do when youre feeling great. But seeing your doctor only when you feel terrible misses the point of preventive health care. Its better to identify and manage potential health issues before you experience recognizable symptoms and before they become life threatening. TRICARE covers many preventive health services at no cost, giving you every reason to visit your doctor regularly.

Interactions between drugs and supplements can result in either an increase or decrease in the effectiveness of your medications. In other words, you could be getting too much or too little of the medications that you need, which can be dangerous to your health.

Learn more about how supplements can change the effectiveness of your medications: http://bit.ly/2fcFXPS

The Vietnam Era Health Retrospective Observational Study (VE-HEROeS) is a nationwide study that will assess the current health and well-being of Vietnam Veterans, Blue Water Navy Veterans, and Veterans who served elsewhere during the Vietnam Era (1961–1975). This study will also compare the health of these Veterans to similarly aged U.S. residents who never served in the military. The study will begin in the Fall of 2016.

As you get older, you are at greater risk for certain illnesses and diseases. While you can’t prevent aging, you can help detect and prevent these illnesses and diseases early on. Screenings can help find them earlier when they can be more successfully treated.

The number of women Veterans using VA health care has more than doubled since 2000 to now over 500,000. The Veterans Health Administration has been working diligently to better meet their needs. Comprehensive health services available to women Veterans today include primary care, specialty care (including cancer), hospice/palliative, mental health, infertility, gynecology, and maternity care services. VA has trained over 3,000 designated women’s health providers through national women’s health programs.

Veterans exposed to burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan want government leaders and the public to keep paying attention to their crippling health problems. A recent Burn Pits 360 organization’s letter to President Obama asks him to “speak out and educate the American people” about the long-term health effects of burn pits, as well as order more research into health conditions and the medical impact of exposure to the burning of hazardous materials.

House Veterans Affairs Committee members have voiced support for recommendations by a congressional panel to reform VA health services, to include improvements to the current setup of government hospitals and private doctors that provide care to veterans.

Home based primary care, pioneered in the VA system in the mid-1970s, started with a few major centers. Today it has expanded to about 150 programs at VA centers around the country. It is designed to take care of patients with serious chronic illnesses for whom routine clinic-based care is difficult to get due to geographic barriers or severe physical disability.

Read more about VA core services that can be provided to vets in their homes: http://bit.ly/1SQw1so

Military and Veterans Affairs officials are years away from fully sharing patient health records, according to a recent report from the Government Accountability Office. But Defense Department officials said they’re confident the two bureaucracies will reach that goal in the next two years, citing recent improvements to the system and planned advances in coming years.

The Million Veteran Program (MVP) is a national, voluntary research program funded entirely by the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Research & Development. The goal of MVP is to partner with veterans receiving their care in the VA Healthcare System to study how genes affect health. Data collected from MVP will be stored anonymously for research on diseases like diabetes and cancer, and military-related illnesses. Participating vets can help support VA medical researchers and contribute to better understanding of and effective treatments for veteran …